In my opinion there are four really good conferences each year for software developers and IT people who use Microsoft Technologies. Two of these conferences are scheduled for September and October of 2015.

The IT/Dev Connections conference will run from September 14-17, in Las Vegas (at the Aria Hotel). The DevIntersection conference will run from October 26-29, also in Las Vegas (at the MGM Grand Hotel).

I have spoken at both events in the past, and I’ll be speaking at both events in 2015. I can strongly recommend both conferences. As a speaker, my reputation depends to some extent on the quality of the events I speak at, so if I didn’t think Dev Connections and DevIntersection were good events, I wouldn’t associate myself with them.

The IT/Dev Intersection event has been running since 2001. Attendance has varied over the years (conferences are highly influenced by the general state of the economy) but I expect somewhere around 2,000 attendees in 2015. The IT/Dev Intersection conference is run by Penton Media. There should be about 250 sessions covering all aspects of development and IT using Microsoft technologies.

The DevConnections event was started in 2012. It was created by people who used to run IT/Dev Intersection. The DevConnections conference will probably have about the same number of attendees (2,000) and sessions (250) as IT/Dev Intersection.

The IT/Dev Connections and DevIntersection conferences are pretty much direct competitors. I wish that one of the two events were clearly superior to the other so I could champion just one, but the reality is (again, in my opinion) that both events are really good.

If you work with Microsoft technologies, check out the two conferences I’ve described, and try to get your company to send you to one (or both!) as a form of training. I think you’ll learn a lot and go back to your work refreshed and energized.